nine
Colt Darling
Christmas Eve day is boring and quiet. Mom sits under her blanket, staring out the window at nothing.
Dad is several gin and tonics deep already when I get home.
He doesn’t drink in front of me, but I can smell it on him, can see it in the slight softness in his eyes, how relaxed he is.
For the first time in a while, I want to be that way too—a little less me, a little less aware of the stagnation of my life here.
I silently curse Duke for that. I was fine before I saw him.
Maybe not totally happy, like he is, but content.
My life didn’t look quite so small until I saw how big his life is.
How perfect for him. A big fucking man with a big fucking dick and a big fucking life.
No wonder he never fit in this small town.
It wasn’t ready for a guy like that, with all that fury and pain, couldn’t contain him, like trying to hold a wildfire on the head of a match.
After lunch, I sit out on the back deck with Dad. He lights his cigar, and I light my cigarette, and we smoke in silence. It’s damp and still out, sixty degrees, grey as every Arkansas winter. There’s no chance of snow. No chance of things being different this year.
“How is everyone?” I ask after a minute. “They all coming tomorrow?”
“We’re getting together at the Darling estate,” Dad says. “Like always.”
“Any of the cousins coming?” I ask.
Dad scratches the back of his head and frowns up at the stark, barren oak overhead. “Preston and Dolly will be there,” he says, which is obvious, since they live on the estate.
“Anyone else?”
Dad keeps in touch with his brothers and their families better than I do. That’s who will be at Christmas dinner. All their kids are grown. Even my youngest cousin Magnolia, who seemed like she’d always be a kid, is all grown up now.
While Dad thinks it over, I go through the list of uncles and cousins in my head.
Uncle JT doesn’t have kids that I know of.
Jeremiah will be at dinner, but Magnolia is on tour and probably too busy to come home to dinner with her uncles and aunts.
Sullivan is off with his weird-ass group—not judging, but the people he chose are all way over the line into Strangeville.
Jedediah’s kids never come. James is back in the Darling family fold, but his kids never come, not having grown up with us and being basically adults already when we met.
Justin will be there, but Devlin will be in New York with Crystal, and Mabel will be there with Baron.
With Duke.
“I think your cousin Lindsey will be there too,” Dad says at last.
I’m still stuck on thoughts of Duke. How I left him.
I just found him, and instead of holding onto him, I left again.
After five years of not hearing from him, only asking after him once in a while because Mabel always acts weird about it when I do, it was good to see his face—more than good.
He’s doing so much better than I could have hoped for him.
Better than I am.
As happy as I am for him, it feels pretty damn shitty to look at your life and realize you’re a loser compared to the guy who bullied you in school.
In all the movies, it’s always the bully who ends up stuck in some dead-end town in a lame job.
The one he bullied is supposed to make it big, to have a cool job in a cool city and be able to walk away knowing he won.
I didn’t win, but I walked away anyway.
And for what?
My stupid pride? My inability to let Duke be the man he is now and not the confused, angry, tormented boy he was in fucking high school?
I accused him of holding onto the past, but the truth is, I’m the one stuck in the past. Even Gloria moved on without me. And yet, here I am, in the same old town, nursing the same old bitterness at the same old wounds with the same old broken family.
The family he broke.
I sit with that a while, trying to decide if it’s something I’ve forgiven.
Because I can’t go back unless I have. I have to have at least that much to offer.
He offered me everything, and I walked away.
If I can’t forgive him, that’s fair. As much as it sucks, it’s better to be apart than with someone filled with festering resentments.
Even I know that can’t work, and I’m hardly a relationship expert.
If I didn’t forgive him, no one would blame me.
He and his brother didn’t just bully me.
They assaulted and maimed me, assaulted my sister and my cousins.
They are the reason Mom tried to end her life.
Duke may have changed, but he still did what he did when he was the typical homophobic jock who hated the queer kid for being himself when he felt like he couldn’t.
The one who would shove him into the lockers at school hard enough to dislocate his shoulder, but then get drunk at a party and come over, get on his knees, and beg to suck the loser’s dick as long as no one would ever know.
The kind of damage he did can’t be undone by leaving the scene of the crime and putting on a disguise.
But is it any better to stay, to defiantly refuse to wear any disguise at all, to the point where it means I never change, never grow?
I stopped taking chances because it never worked out, but how can anything ever work out if I don’t give it a chance?
Somewhere along the way, I stopped moving forward and got stuck in a loop, an endless Groundhog Day of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Or maybe I’m stuck in the present. I’m sure as fuck not moving toward the future. I’m just lying back, waiting for the future to happen, whatever comes.
Duke has done everything to build the life he wants.
I’ve done nothing but let life happen to me. Even running into him was by chance.
But maybe it wasn’t just a chance with Duke, but the chance to wake up, to break out of the loop.
It’s not about whether I owe him a chance, or whether either of us deserve it. It’s about whether we want it, whether we’re willing to take that chance and make something from it.
He did. He put it all out there, even knowing I might reject him.
I wasn’t as brave. Like a coward, I did exactly what he accused me of. I ran.
If I don’t take the chance now, will I ever get another?
I already know the answer to that. Nothing stays the same.
Life moves on whether we’re ready for it or not.
He’s made himself a good life, one that any man would be lucky to share.
If I run into him in another five years, I have no doubt he’ll be happily settled with that lucky guy who didn’t run, who saw what he had to offer and jumped at the chance to love the man he is, not punish him for the boy he was.
The only question is, when that happens, will I regret it? Will I always wonder what would have happened if I had taken the leap with him? If I don’t, will I look back and imagine what we’d be in another life, the one where I did?
I already know the answer to that question too. All I have to do is look at the last few years.
Maybe I haven’t been as directionless as I thought, though. Maybe I just needed someone to point me in the right direction. All along, I was holding off on putting down roots because I always knew I would leave again, that I don’t belong here anymore.
Sure, my family is here. But my cousins haven’t stayed for that. They’ve made families of their own, moved on and made lives for themselves here or outside Faulkner. This town isn’t a trap unless I let it be.
I finish my cigarette and turn to Dad.
“Would you be pissed if I left?”
“Depends on where you’re going,” he says, giving me a suspicious look, like he thinks I’m headed to the bar. But that urge doesn’t come.
That realization settles something inside me. I used to get wasted to escape, but this isn’t something I want to escape. Even though it’s scary, for once, I want to run toward it instead of away.
“I think I left something I need back in New York,” I say.
Dad lifts his brows. “Something? Or someone?”
“Someone,” I say, swallowing hard. “A man.”
I’m not ready to tell him who it is, but in this way, I had it easy compared to Duke.
I never had to worry about losing the most important people in my life.
I never even had to come out to my family.
We’ve always accepted each other exactly as we are in every aspect of our lives, from my brother’s rebellion to my sister’s neurospicy quirks to who I have in my bed, without judgment or criticism.
I know that for Dad, it’s because his father was the opposite, but I’ve never fully appreciated it as much as I do now.
Dad puffs on his cigar for a few seconds, watching me over the fat stub, before he says, “I’ll be less upset if you leave now than if you keep coming back here every year for Christmas until you’re my age.”
I stand, then bend and kiss the top of his thinning hair. “Thanks, Dad.”
A few hours later, I’m flying back into New York.
Between getting a flight and travel time, it’s late in the evening by the time I arrive.
The tarmac is swirling with snow, but we make it in.
I get a ride to the only place I know besides my hotel.
Luckily I’m good with that kind of thing and clearheaded enough to remember where he lives.
I could never have done that when I was fucked up all the time.
The driver leaves me, and I walk up to his building through the soft carpet of snow covering the ground.
It hasn’t piled up high yet, but the driver said it’s supposed to keep going all night.
For a moment, I stop and marvel. Christmas lights are twined around the building, and inside the lobby, I can see big shiny ornaments and a twinkling tree.
Outside, though, everything is quiet, soft, and still under the layer of white.
I ask the doorman to call up, but no one answers. I try a few more times before I accept defeat. He’s not here.
I wait outside, stomping my feet and blowing into my hands to keep them warm. At last, I give in and text my sister.
Dynamo: Is Duke there?
MaybeItsMabel: no he left a while ago
My mind immediately goes to dark thoughts—he told her to say that because he doesn’t want to see me; he’s home but not answering the door because he looked out the window and saw me out here.
Then worse thoughts come. He could be at a club right now, meeting a stranger to take the edge off what he probably perceives as rejection.
My stomach knots at the idea, and I finally admit to myself that whatever the reason, I’m not going to see him. It’s too late.
I got a chance, and already blew it. Maybe in this life, I don’t get another.
I turn away from the door, pull my hood up, and shove my hands into my pockets, hunching against the cold as I start to go.
I don’t know where I’m going, just that I need to get away.
I glance in both directions, trying to decide.
There’s a figure ahead on the right. My chest tightens, and I stop in front of his building, on the sidewalk.
He’s walking with his head down, hands in the pockets of his coat, but I know.
I know his stride, the shape of his broad shoulders, the hat pulled down over his hair, so just a few curls sneak out at the bottom.
Something in the image makes me sad, how lonely a figure he cuts, alone on Christmas Eve, plodding through the falling snow by himself.
His gait is slow, his shoulders slumped a bit, as if in defeat, as if he’s dreading making it home.
My heart hammers harder with each step he takes. I don’t know what to do with myself. Is that dread because of me? If it is, will he even want to see me? He might be angry about the way I left.
I don’t want to just stand there with my hands in my pockets waiting for him to notice me like some pathetic dog sniffing around outside his house.
My fingers close around a book of matches in my pocket, and I remember how much he loves fire.
How much it calmed him just last night, though it feels like a lifetime ago.
I strike one, watching the flame flare before it flickers and goes out. I light another one, and then another, until he finally looks up and notices me. He stops under the closest streetlamp, the snow swirling down around him in a cold blue haze.
The match dies, and I strike another.
He stares at the bright flare, then tears his gaze away, back to me.
“What are you doing?”
“Lighting your way home.”
“With matches?”
“What’s that saying? You catch more moths with flame?”
The tiniest twitch at the corner of his lips gives me hope. “You’re deranged.”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
“You crazy idiot.”
The match flickers out, and we stand there for a second, staring at each other through the whirling, feathery flakes, the streetlamp casting a glaze over the fresh white blanket of snow.
I take the first step toward him, then another.
By the time I take my third step, he moves too, coming toward me fast, making up the distance, as if he can make up for the time we lost. My steps increase too.
There’s not enough time to spend it standing around staring at one another.
We crash into each other, and my arms go around him, and his around me, and for a long minute, we just stand there, under the falling snow, in the icy New York night.
He pulls back first, cupping my face between his hands. “You came back.”
“I did.” I can’t help but smile.
He searches my eyes. “Why?”
“For you, Duke. I came back for you.”
“I went looking for you.”
“What did you find?”
“I found… You,” he says. “You were right here where you belong.”
I raise my hand to his neck, gripping his throat and pulling him in. Our lips meet, and I’m suddenly hot all over, filled with the fire he lights inside me, despite the freezing night air, the snowflakes drifting down like ashes all around us.
When I think I’m going to combust, I draw back with reluctance.
“Let’s go inside,” I say, my voice rough with emotion, or lust, or both. “We’ve got five years of lost time to make up for.”
The corner of his mouth tilts up. “Or ten.”
“Do you always have to argue?”
“Do you really have to ask?”